During the rapid development stage of the ceramic tile industry, many ceramic tile brands have included the strategy of "opening big stores in small cities and multiple stores in big cities" as part of the big business training plan, and have achieved good results. In particular, leading brands such as Marco Polo, Nobel, and Dongpeng have not only established N terminal stores with an area of over 2,000 square meters across the country, but also have dozens of outlets in first-tier cities.
However, with the downturn in the real estate industry, repeated epidemics, the closure of renovations, and the rise of Internet consumption trends, the traffic of traditional ceramic tile stores is shrinking significantly, and many brands in home furnishing stores have experienced serious declines in order volumes. “In the past, when performance failed to improve, everyone would still think about whether the store was not well decorated or the activities were not done well. But if the same situation is put to now, if they cannot sell a single brick in half a month, most bosses will directly reduce the store area. Or simply close the store." A regional manager of a certain brand said bluntly that the operating situation of offline stores in the ceramic tile industry this year is not optimistic.
Offline stores are struggling, do dealers still have a future? Through interviews, Zhongtaojun learned that brands such as Jinduo, Huiya, Qianghui, Shunhui, Melco, One, and Vero will regard "online traffic diversion" as the focus of empowering terminal dealers in 2022 . Can online channels achieve precise traffic diversion, low-cost customer acquisition, and high-efficiency conversion? Below, Zhongtaojun will give examples and analysis from various models such as traditional e-commerce, word-of-mouth marketing, live streaming, and smart stores.
Traditional e-commerce
Tmall, JD.com
As early as around 2015, many ceramic tile brands took the initiative to embrace e-commerce and bravely took the first step forward. However, due to the low-frequency consumption and semi-finished product attributes of ceramic tiles, as well as the increasing operating costs, traffic costs and ranking bidding costs of e-commerce, brands entering the e-commerce field have ended up with brand promotion being greater than actual sales.
In the era of mobile Internet, even though the penetration rate of traditional e-commerce into people's daily life is very high, the subsequent development growth rate of traditional e-commerce has slowed down significantly. Alibaba and JD.com have increasingly disclosed GMV (total transaction volume) in their financial reports. Come less and less, but you can still get a glimpse of it. Especially in the home building materials industry, online transactions still need to be based on offline experience.
At present, the Tmall and JD flagship stores opened by most ceramic tile brands actually take over some of the functions of the previous brand official websites, used to handle online traffic and push orders from potential customers to offline stores. dealers to receive and convert; some potential customers have even negotiated and submitted deposits online, but in the end, local dealers still need to provide follow-up services.
Take customized brands such as Shangpin Home Delivery and Sophia as examples. They will use traditional e-commerce as a consultation portal for consumers, provide free services such as booking room measurements, booking design and drawings, and finally allocate orders to the nearest dealer. stores; or by collecting coupons online and then verifying them in offline stores; or even guiding consumers to stores by placing orders online and picking up goods in stores. It is understood that the amount of customer inquiries received by these brands through e-commerce channels is quite considerable, and they bring many orders to offline stores every month. Their traffic diversion model is worth learning from ceramic tile brands.
Live streaming
Douyin, Kuaishou
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, people’s consumption habits have undergone tremendous changes. The time consumers spend offline looking at and experiencing products has been greatly shortened, thereby greatly increasing the time they spend online understanding, experiencing, and purchasing products. Compared with pictures, texts and short videos, live selling is undoubtedly a more real, comprehensive and consumption model that can stimulate the desire to buy.
In May, Nobel's first "520 Love Home Day" special live broadcast event was officially launched at the Nobel Ceramics flagship store in Wuhan Friendship International Home Plaza. In terms of basic data, its live broadcast room has 7,613 viewers, 12,902 views, and the highest number of people online at the same time is 757; in terms of interactive data, its live broadcast room has 46,084 likes, 673 comments, and 2,416 shares. Added 155 followers.
Nowadays, live streaming has become a normal operation in all walks of life. Taking advantage of opportunities such as 315, 618, Double 11, Brand Day, Anniversary and other opportunities, national linkage live broadcasts led by brand headquarters can be said to be blooming everywhere, and are becoming the online A new path has been opened up for business expansion. So in addition to the national joint live broadcast led by the headquarters, should the ceramic tile dealers themselves launch live broadcasts?
A few days ago, Marco Polo Tile Nanling dealers were watchingThe channel account shared his thoughts and experiences during the four days of broadcasting. He said bluntly in the video that after a few days, his willingness to continue live broadcasting is still very strong. If he wants to adapt to the new environment and situation, it is very important to learn to use new methods and channels to attract traffic. It is not difficult to see from this point that some dealers still attach great importance to "advancing with the times."
Zhong Taojun noticed that many dealers have started to do live broadcasts on their own, and most of them have the mentality of giving it a try, hoping that live broadcasts can bring some changes to the deteriorating business. Unfortunately, it is easy to do a live broadcast, but it is not easy to do a good live broadcast. At present, dealers face two major problems when doing live broadcasts. First, there is a lack of systematic live broadcast skills training. They do live broadcasts with dark eyes and do not know how to attract fans, let alone how to convert them. Second, major live broadcast platforms are full of various types of live broadcasts. This kind of "factory direct sales special price bricks", the price competitiveness of dealers is obviously weak.
Word of mouth marketing
Little Red Book, a Pocket of Candies
With the rapid rise of mainstream consumer groups in the 80s and 90s and the post-00s generation, online decision-making and offline experience have become the mainstream consumption patterns of the younger generation. At present, new media platforms with hundreds of millions of online traffic have become the bridge for brands to reach the young people of Generation Z. Platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Yidoutang have become the core traffic positions of brand word-of-mouth marketing.
At the beginning of the year, Grace entered new media platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Yidoutang. Through a multi-platform and three-dimensional content word-of-mouth matrix, it continued to output high-quality grass-growing content from shallow to deep, and gained 5.9 million+ exposures. With the continuous fermentation of word-of-mouth content and positive feedback from stores across the country, consumers are constantly attracted by Xiaohongshu online and directed to the store for consultation and purchase.
It is understood that in addition to Grace, brands such as Samit, Owen Lai, Hengfu, and Xin Runcheng have also begun to deploy word-of-mouth marketing. In the era of mobile Internet, how to convey the brand to consumers at the right time and at the right place to form a word-of-mouth communication effect, thereby creating a brand that occupies the minds of consumers, has become an important task in brand building for ceramic tile companies. Relatively speaking, brands with strong grass-growing capabilities also play a certain role in promoting the operations of dealers.
There are two main forms of brand content delivery on various media platforms: KOL and KOC. However, no matter which form it is, word-of-mouth marketing is not just about product promotion. It uses content sharing as the basis to expand the communication power of the brand. , thereby empowering offline physical stores and completing a closed marketing loop. Obviously, in order to achieve the effect of traffic fission, it is not enough to rely solely on the efforts of the brand headquarters. Dealers must also join in.
Smart Store
Mini program, APP
In order to attract offline traffic and bring orders online, it is extremely important to promote the link and integration of the two. Therefore, many ceramic tile brands have developed smart store systems using small programs or APPs as carriers. As early as 2018, Oceano launched smart stores characterized by professional services and efficient operations, which include interactive large screen 2.0, 3D cloud design system, Oceano artist applet, and Jukebao APP wait.
It is understood that in order to reconstruct the connection between brand-store-user, Jinduo independently developed new marketing tools and launched "Jinduo Ceramics Smart Store" to provide terminal stores with integrated operation and management IT solutions. , achieving online and offline integration. Through smart stores, Jinduo's dealers can build their own accessible and operable private traffic pool to uniformly transform various consumption touch points.
Coincidentally, Nengqiang also launched an online experience hall and smart store system this year to break through the barriers between online and offline channels. The system creates a more intelligent and efficient retail model by creating multiple professional and high-quality services such as product display, case sharing, and store management. It uses big data to seamlessly connect online stores and offline stores, helping offline stores achieve Operate efficiently.
Some people may be curious, what problems can the so-called smart store system solve for ceramic tile offline stores? First, it can solve the problem of customer flow acceptance and conversion, while also taking into account multi-channel marketing and management work; second, it can use the simplest and most intelligent interactive method to highlight product selling points; third, it can use Different consumption experiences retain customers, improve store conversion rates, and thereby increase sales.
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It has been six years since Jack Ma first proposed the new retail concept at the Alibaba Cloud Conference (October 2016).
During this period, the strong rise of online channels seemed to have left a mess for the ceramic tile industry, but in fact it sent a warning to ceramic tile dealers: Sticking to offline stores is doomed to have no future.
